It seems far-fetched on the surface, but everyone was preparing for a major war Monday, when South Korea carried out a live-fire drill along its maritime border with North Korea, the exact same drill which last month ended with them trading fire.

The timing is particularly bizarre as North Korea has issued a few conciliatory statements in recent days, and the drill will undoubtedly be viewed not just as another military challenge but a slap in the face of those overtures.

After failing to provoke North Korea into retaliating for South Korea’s highly provocative live-fire drills in the disputed waters in the Yellow Sea this past Sunday, South Korean officials have claimed that the North’s remarkable show of restraint was simply “political posturing”, and now they fully expect large-scale “terrorist” attacks on their own civilian population centers to be carried out by the North in stealth.

In order to defend themselves from this possibility, South Korea is going to “strengthen” their intelligence services, like the CIA or the FBI.

If that doesn’t scare the shit out of every single South Korean, I don’t know what would.

While repeatedly demanding that China intervene to contain North Korea, Washington and its allies have rebuffed China’s diplomatic efforts to calm the Korean confrontation. Last Sunday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton phoned Chinese State Councilor Dai to urge Beijing to send what the State Department called “a strong message” that Pyongyang “cannot misinterpret”.

The US along with its allies, South Korea and Japan, have rejected China’s requests for an emergency meeting to restart the six-party talks, initially sponsored by Beijing to ease tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear programs. On Tuesday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declared: “The United States and a host of others, I don’t think, are not interested in stabilising the region through a series of PR activities.”

(UPDATE: South Korea “accidentally” fired an artillery round and hit the south side of the DMZ. (report at the end of the article))

(UPDATE 2: Pretty soon anything goes in the propaganda wars as journalists have been “asked’ to leave Yeonpyeong Island. Everything we hear about what happens will be from “unnamed military sources” (ie the Marine commander who vowed to kill 2,000 North Koreans)…)

A few days after the South Korean marines staged a phony march in which they sent marines into the streets to “protest” for war against North Korea, the marine commander “vowed” to kill two thousand North Koreans at a service held for the two marines killed in the recent artillery exchange in and around Yeonpyeong Island…

In case you needed more proof that this entire North Korea “crisis’ was nothing more than a staged production for the Propaganda Ministry, believe it or not, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), by law the highest ranking military officer in the United States armed forces “and the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Counciland the Secretary of Defense” ” Admiral Mike Mullen, went on THE VIEW as US military warships were steaming into the Yellow Sea.

With tensions the highest they have been in 50 years in that region and WWIII just waiting around the corner, the White House thought the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s valuable time was best spent talking to Whoopi Goldberg.

Are you fucking kidding me?! A US warship is heading to North Korea and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is talking to Whoopi Fucking Goldberg?

Also notice in the video below that the “news’ hour host doesn’t mention that those “civilians” killed in the shelling were actually contractors from South Korea who were killed on the military base and “burned beyond recognition”.

Two civilians were found dead Wednesday on a front-line South Korean island devastated by a North Korean artillery attack, the first civilian deaths recorded from the bombing, the coast guard said.

Marines and police found the bodies at a construction site of a marine corps base on Yeonpyeong Island, the coast guard said.

The deceased were identified as Kim Chi-baek, 61, and Bae Bok-chul, 60, both of whom were contracted to build a residential building at the marine corps base, it said, adding that their bodies were burned beyond recognition.